Hellobee Boards

Sort of. We are in a city condo that is just too small. We want to move to a house, in the suburbs, but anything we can afford now we would want to move out of within a few years. Hopefully we will be able to afford a long term house in a couple years, and DH wants to just rent a house that will be good enough for now, for a couple years. Financially it's smart but I just want to move in someplace and know we aren't moving again anytime soon! But now I'm just saying I want to be in a long term house by the time C starts kindergarten or first grade (2-3 years from now). But I'm afraid houses will keep getting more expensive of course!

yes. although when we bought we knew this would likely be our forever home due to our age and not wanting to have a mortgage forever, it still sucks because I would like more square footage. Our living area is a little on the small side and we don't have a proper dining area. The market is also ridiculous where were at and realistically we will probably not be able to afford to move. But it is what it is and I know people live with a lot less then what we have.

I just wish I knew where we were going to end up long term. We're about to make a huge move and go back to renting for 3ish years and after that I have no idea where we will settle down. It's stressful.

@Raindrop: one plus for us is the towns we are looking to move to seem to be inflated- like I really don't think prices can or will keep going up the way they've been, but our area where we currently live is definitely on the rise. So if we can rent our condo out it should help, as long as it's not a huge pain...

@yellowbird: yessss this is my life. It sucks.

Well I do see our house as a forever home but I totally understand how you're feeling. It's just that we bought kind of small to give ourselves more breathing room and get settled in the area and now I feel like upgrading to a bigger home or a better location is just impossible because instead of costing just a little more it's now 3 or 4 times more. I'm also in a very good school district though which is why it's so expensive.

My bil just bought in Silicon Valley so I totally feel for you! And we owned in NYC so also crazy! Thankfully we benefitted from prices shooting up, but I know if we had been looking to buy instead of sell it would have been very stressful we had offers from people with way more money than us who we had to turn down because they weren't "wealthy" enough and that was super depressing!!

Oh totally. When we bought our house 4 years ago, it was perfect. Now we have pets and a toddler with a baby on the way and we are squeezed, by houses with a 4th bedroom in decent neighborhoods are hella expensive and my husband isn't really willing to move to the burbs.

I put kind of! It's not likely we'll ever be able to afford a 3 bedroom in our town (with the specs we want...elevator building and garage space). And while our condo value is going up, so are the values everywhere else in the area, so to get bigger, we'd have to move out to the suburbs.

And I'm not sure I'm ready for that. I'd see my husband less, he'd see the girls less as his commute would be even longer. I'd have more solo parenting time (boo), and the only trade off would be more space for more possessions.

I don't know. Every time I lust after a 3rd bedroom, I weigh that against moving further out and all the negatives and I end up deciding I'd rather stay in our smaller place for now.

We have been in our home for 2 years and we planned to be here 5 but now DH wants to move to a bigger house. The housing market is very strong right now in our area - houses selling in days but with us expecting LO2 in less than a month and not feeling secure about our jobs - I really don't want to look to moving now especially to a bigger more expensive house. DH feels if we don't act now we won't be able to afford the houses available now in the future because the cost of everything is going up.

We are in our probably forever home. I wouldn't mind moving but we've made some nice improvements and have plenty of space. Our problem was that inventory was so low for the year that we were looking! We ended up having to be really aggressive with this house just because it was a rare one that would suit our needs.

I put "kindof" because, although we plan to stay in this house until we're too old for stairs, we are on hold on some of the major projects we still have left. Daycare uses up our discretionary income and DIY projects are hard with two toddlers underfoot. We may not get to some of those project for 5-10 years

Also, I was 32 when we bought our house (our first). So I felt ok with skipping the starter home stage!

@Raindrop: whereabouts do you live? Sorry I missed it if you already mentioned.

@Raindrop: I feel for you. I think you live in the Bay Area? We do and we are thinking of the future... It's scary! Cause even if our home
Value has gone up so have the next level homes? It's complicated but we are thinking about expanding our home now because upgrading seems so hard. Expanding also seems hard!!!

@Raindrop: I'm in Silicon Valley too! We are renting and luckily we've been in our place for quite a few years so our rent is pretty cheap. I can't believe how much the rental market has gone up in the last few years. We are nowhere near being able to buy what we want out here and it sucks. We want to move but finding a job for me in the areas we want to go has been difficult.

To balance our forever home intentions with our wild dreams, we sorted through every available house one by one that we could reasonably afford (based on projected selling of our home) and ruled out each one. Once we realized we have good reason for not getting any of the other houses available, we felt better.

The only thing I don't really like about our house is that it's on a busy-ish street. I'm sort of jealous of the houses around the corner from us because there's less traffic. But they're currently selling for about 175% of what we paid four years ago, and the houses themselves would be direct comps to ours (size, age, condition, general layout) if we just got new kitchen cabinets -- not even high-end ones! -- and refreshed one bathroom a bit. It's insane. Plus, the city is playing around with zoning and I worry that if/when our neighbors sell, we'll end up with giant, ugly, boxy, four-to-a-lot townhouses next door. Overall I love the house and I don't think we'll ever outgrow it, but I'm sort of sad that we'll probably never be able to trade up to a "better" block in the neighborhood.

My husband works in Mountain View and I never expect to ever be able to afford a house here. I just looked on Zillow at the recently sold houses and If we want to buy a house we will just have to move out of the bay area. Even the condos in our area are selling for around $1mil and the manufactured homes are going for $350-$450,000.

My old boss lived in Oakland and commuted to Palto Alto every day because she couldn't afford a house. If my boss couldn't there's no way I could. So we'll live here while it works and move when it doesn't.

I vacillate between bitter and accepting of this area.